Guild Wars 2

always remember that if one of your players is angry with you, it is because he really cares about the game, and that’s much healthier for you than apathy

That’s a line from Jeff Strain (one of the founders of Arenanet) in a speech he gave soon after GW2 was announced. Keep that in mind before you say anything about people complaining on forums.

I can firmly say that I quit last summer, as I last logged into the game to make sure that my account wasn’t stolen. I still check into the game’s updates and read the forums from time to time, because you could say I invested quite heavily into the game, what with the waiting and anticipating for half a decade (big GW1 fan). I really like the many changes that happened in the feature pack (even if stuff like megaservers left the API a pile of smoking rubble, but sacrifices have to be made sometimes), and the announcement of season 2 living story being more of a permanent nature is almost enough to make me come back. But as much as my stopping was in protest of those sorts of practices (activity level speak louder than forum posts), I remember what I spent most of my time in game doing each day: A checklist of repetitive chores that leave me not wanting to play at all once they were done.

It’s normal to get tired of a game after a while, and I got tired of GW1 regularly. But the thing is that I left the game still liking it, just wanting to do something else. So I kept coming back to it. I think about GW2 and I don’t want to get mired in it again. Part of that has to do with the timegating making it feel like I am being punished for not putting time in every day. Punished for being busy, essentially. I am not going to play something that does that. If that changes, maybe I will come back for a bit.

Eh, I don’t think the terminology was ever set in stone. Ping to me is sending out a communication to see if somebody is available (generally used in a work setting). People “ping their builds” in GW1 in much the same way someone links a wp or a skill in GW2, so it makes sense to me.

As soon as something like this exists, it becomes pretty blatant pay to win, really rather not see it, frankly. I’m cool with collecting minis for the sake of collecting them.

More dye channels for everything, period. I want my radiant armor to be golden!

A bonus reward for completing all explorable paths for a dungeon in a day? That’s a pretty neat idea. I don’t like the idea of a specific token per se, there’s enough currencies as it is, and being the only source would immediately make it another chore on the daily to do list. Coin and karma would probably be enough, but laurels would be nice.

Isn’t this basically what the titles you get for every 5K AP are supposed to be?

Since the runes of scavenging had their gold bonus removed, I’m wondering if this is in the works. We’ll need something to use all this luck after hitting 300% MF and everything coming in is blue by minimum. Perhaps throw in an xp and karma bar as well since we already have boosts from Achievement chests.

LordByron.8369:

i really find fun how dungeon players finds hard and grindy to obtain dragonite.
While
Open pve players find hard and gridy to get empyreal fragments.

Same issue as fractal backpack made worse.

If before you had to do one thing that possibly you didn t like, now you almost certainly will be forced to farm something you don t like.

This is a really good point. I definitely wasn’t happy about the prospects of being forced to play the different types of content if I wanted to get all the materials. At this point though, I find an interesting phenomena happening: I am actually happy to see chests out in the environment because I know I will get some fragments from it. Even if I don’t get anything good from a world boss (which is usually the case) the Dragonite keeps it from feeling disappointing. If there was only one type of mat that dropped from everything, it would not feel as rewarding.

I would recommend unbinding the lowest level mats though. If someone isn’t intending on leveling their crafting at all, these items are just taking up space, and that prevents it from feeling rewarding. If they could sell them, the extra money would make it feel plenty rewarding.

I can appreciate the OP’s feelings on the matter, it makes me sad to see the game degenerate into a mindless loop around a single zone. More time gating is not the answer though. It would just add another item to the list of chores that you need to do every day in the game to make progress towards any long term goals, and chores should not be in games. If they need to regulate the value of the exclusive exotics, they can just lower the odds of them coming out of the boxes. Right now champ boxes are probably the only thing in the game that gives a constant (and decent) reward vs time. And that is something that this game really needs, no matter how you may feel about farming.

I agree that the empyreal fragment drops are a little on the low side. Just did Scavenger’s Chasm with some guild mates, expecting a couple from each of the 3 chests (it’s a bit of a long puzzle so it should have been one of the more rewarding ones) but ending up with a whopping 0…

Ignoring weirdness like that, considering that you will end up with a full stack of bloodstone dust from a single Invasion without really trying, I support reducing the amount of dust handed out and increasing the amount of fragments chests and whatnot give. Farming champs is rather mindless and rapid paced, so only a couple dust makes sense, but JP and mini dungeons have genuine time and skill requirements, and adjusting it as mentioned would make both feel more rewarding. It’s that whole risk vs reward thing that people keep mentioning.

I think It’s worth noting that while most dragon minions are corrupted forms of other creatures, the big champions we see as world bosses and the like don’t have any non-minion counterpart in the world. In fact, they are all basically miniature dragons. I don’t think they are corrupted creatures. Glint was capable of reproducing, so I think you know where this is going.

Teq is a child-Zhaitan. So he’s probably still growing and getting stronger.

People really think this is about nerfing farming? This is being done because of the great amount of conflict and divisiveness it was causing in the player base. If anything, this is letting people have their cake and eat it too. All the people who didn’t rely on MF will now get to have some, and people who relied solely on it won’t have to, and both groups won’t have to fight about whether or not it’s fair that someone is using MF gear.

Welcome Stefan! Feel free to stop by the gw2spidy chat sometime and say hi!

Ok, so what about runes and sigils then, and what will claws craft into? Also, will the gear remain account bound after we select a different stat combo, or will it effectively change into a brand new item?

A new tab with ascended gear that costs more tokens than exotic would make sense, though I can already see the incredible outrage from people who have to grind the dungeons all over again.

Dresden.1736:

Okay, then what about Celestial gear? I sure as hell don’t want to change all the work I put into my Celestial gear into some cheap, generic 3-stat armor. Are you going to improve the Celestial stats, or replace MF with a different stat?

I always figured the MF on celestial was just going to disappear, since the point is more for it to be a jack of all trades, and not necessarily MF (though I can see why you would use it for that)

I’d say I miss heroes and henchman, but it’s more the ability to not have to rely on other people to play the game. Also the depth of builds and being able to freely experiment.

It’s funny, I play games typically because I don’t have to rely on other people to play them, but I have basically the same complaints as the OP. After coming from a game that I could do pretty much everything in by myself if I wanted (GW1), I have been a little bit frustrated by the commonness of group events and the inability to find other people to do them (same goes for dungeons, but less so). I was hoping that champ loot would help, but it’s not really been that successful. The real issue with zerging is that it prevents other areas from really being reasonable places to hang out, which in turn completely destroys the whole “everything is endgame” idea that they touted around the game’s release. The zerg is the endgame. And if it wasn’t the invasion, it would be the world bosses, or some loop around frostgorge or another area. The idea that some strange public consensus decides what constitutes endgame is kinda neat in a way, but I would rather have the freedom to actually tackle everything in the game by myself.

Also, feasible is a very different thing than reasonable, which most group events are not. Doing things for the challenge can only win out so much if there is no proper reward for the risk of continual failure and wasted time. Not going to repeatedly throw myself at a champion until I beat it for 5s and a green item. The wp and repair costs will eat that up pretty much immediately. A net loss from an encounter douses the fires of accomplishment pretty fast.

So I agree with the OP, but coming from the opposite direction.

If we’re dealing with absolutely no currencies whatsoever, then we would be beating content solely for beating the content. And if I had my checklist of things to accomplish I would happily run through them. The issue is that it would be very hard to get people behind doing harder content repeatedly. There is really not thousands of hours of unique content in an MMO, and the only way they get people to play them that long is by providing larger goals that need to be facilitated through all of those currencies. So yeah, we would probably all play that game, but we would have stopped playing it once we felt we had experienced all of the content. We would probably want to come back from time to time to re experience it, but there wouldn’t be much reason to grind it into dust like is necessary to get the company’s desired mileage out of it.

All I gotta say is double the chances of a tiny number is still tiny.

I don’t keep my MF full tilt, but I have 135% without any temp boosts. Greens are the most common item, followed by blues, whites, rares, and then exotics. Until the invasions started giving me piles of champ boxes, I pretty much never saw an exotic drop from an enemy, just occasionally from the chests. We’re talking like a hundredth of a percent chance of getting an exotic in the first place, doubling or tripling isn’t going to make a noticeable difference.

Getting a pre to drop from an enemy is pretty much trying to win the lottery. Every ticket is as likely to win, no matter how many times you played before. There are people who play every day their whole lives and don’t ever win. The RNG here is no more broken. Just be happy that this particular RNG doesn’t have any sort of entry fee, unlike some other ones in the game.

I think the words of millionaire Felix Dennis are rather applicable to rewards. To paraphrase: If everyone was trying to collect seaweed instead of money, I would be trying to get the biggest seaweed pile.

If you are viewing currencies as merely being a point system, then it is intrinsically rewarding to make those numbers go higher. And I’m pretty sure that’s how the people who play the game primarily for efficiency of getting loot or experience or whatever are viewing it. Going around in the zerg is just a more efficient way of increasing your score than doing other things in the game.

And that’s a totally OK thing for people to be doing and enjoying. I like the silly power trip I get of being in this big army that steamrolls over groups of enemies that would utterly destroy me by myself. The problem arises in that the game is ultimately not designed towards solo stuff, so if you don’t WANT to be in the zerg, or run the same dungeon repeatedly, you will have a hard time finding enough people. I have never completed the Dungeon Master achievement because I’ve had such a hard time finding groups for the less popular paths. So all of the sudden, my Intrisic rewards are in direct opposition to the Extrinsic rewards of other people.

The CMY color model doesn’t get enough love. I say we make the 3 teams Cyan, Yellow, and Magenta. It would be consistent, and probably easier for everyone to differentiate

Nettle.9025:

Players who love games like Dark Souls or Ninja Gaiden types or I Wanna Be the Guy / spinoffs are in the minority in MMOs. Unfortunately, there really are very few options in the genre for skill reliant PvE.

People who like games THAT difficult are not a majority in any genre!

Anyways, I stand by my deadline stance being a reason nobody wants more challenge. But I think part of the complaint is also about the whole difficulty vs reward issue. Urmaug’s secret is probably the easiest JP, and it gives just as many achievement points as Obsidian Sanctum. In fact, they all give the same 10 achievement points. The reason so many people spent all their time in COF 1 before is because all dungeon paths give basically the same reward and that one was just faster. The crazy thing is that the scarlet invasions are probably not even a better ROI, just require less than the minimal skill that COF1 did. But the issue is a measure of skill vs time. I would rather my time sink into something be related to how difficult it was instead of just consuming time in the most direct sense.

Totally agree Seras, I managed to get the necessary monetary awards for HOM by working on the titles that didn’t require money (most of which required a decent amount of skill and understanding of the game). I think one of the reasons for GW1’s dedicated fanbase was because Anet wasn’t trying to force the game to be an MMO, but embraced the way people played, which was mostly by themselves with heroes and henchmen. There weren’t really any extrinsic rewards in the game that couldn’t be bought with rewards from another part of the game, and absolutely everything really hard to get was cosmetic and therefore optional. I used skill points to make consets that I sold for money that I used to buy the materials and consumables I needed. Other people took those consets and farmed UW, sold the ectos and the like to people like me, and bought things like zcoins so they could get the envoy weapons. Everybody did the stuff they wanted, and could use their rewards to get the stuff they wanted. And that is where stuff like the time gated laurels and excess of bound equipment fails.

There is a logistical issue why it works this way. Events take up to 45 minutes, and can start up to 10 minutes late. The invasion happens once an hour. that only gives 5 minutes between events. If they let anything within that hour start the events, then it would just turn into a mess really fast. It sucks, definitely, but at least there is a clearly understandable reason.

I am all for skill based achievements and rewards IF I don’t have a hard time limit before it is lost forever. Then it’s basically a project at work, except without the luxury of having dedicated work hours to do it or actual monetary compensation for my time. That is why so many people complain about the difficulty: Time constraints making it more stressful than necessary.

That’s kinda zen…

Agreed, if hitting F again would disengage the revive, that would be nice. I don’t have an ele, but i appreciate what you’re saying, I have a similar issue on my war with the rifle burst attack. Being stuck in place for so long makes it really hard to make use of it when big fights require constant movement to survive. Especially considering there are plenty of equally effective burst attacks without that disadvantage

Maybe it’s his nightmare because it’s a weapon that he can’t use in the game he appeared in?

I spend most of my time achievement hunting, and while the points and getting AR chests are an extra motivator, it’s mostly a matter of being something else I can check off a list and say that I’ve accomplished. All of the currencies in the game exist for the sake of accomplishing some intrinsic goal, so as soon as those goals are completed, all of the money I have will have no real purpose, unless I set some sort of personal goal to hit x amount. So eventually I will be playing the game solely for getting the next AR chest.

Just because it isn’t as tedious, doesn’t make it not so.

Jack-a-lop, because bunnies

I like this idea. With the amount of stuff that spawns and the number of players involved, a few NPCs wouldn’t make a huge difference, even if they were especially beefy.

I’m going to expect Braham to get a hairstyle change in the next release with Rox bugging him about why he decided to change it.

why did you bring the dreadspawn maw into this…

But seriously, evil Sylvari women have a strong tendency towards being omnicidal maniacs and being evil solely for the sake of being evil. Check out some of the other Nightmare Court people. It’s totally a thing

So seeing how Scarlet is a pretty clear culmination of the majority of the last year’s Living Story stuff, it feels kinda like we just reached the end of a season of a TV show. Since this is the analogy that everybody seems to use when talking about the LS stuff anyways, let’s run with it. Can we get some sort of season 1 release? For all of us who it isn’t new to and have done most of the stuff before, we would get to revisit stuff again, and the people who missed it the first time would get to experience the whole story. Heck, you could probably even make it an item in the gemstore, just like getting a season of a show on disc. Messing with those dungeons to make them fractals seems like a bit of a waste when you could do something like this instead. Also, it would quell a great deal of the discontent over the temporary content if they knew they could eventually pick up the season at a later time.

I think the main issue why the stuff outside of the temp LS stuff hasn’t received much popularity is mostly a lack of advertising. The Modus Sceleris NPC guild is a really cool idea, and the fact that there are other named guilds outside of what players create makes the world feel more alive. In fact, if they snuck in little extra events that expanded the guild’s story, I’m sure the dedicated group of lore hounds would be keeping an eye out for them. The big advantage to the whole event system, as the OP pointed out, is that they make the world feel more alive. The big disadvantage is that all that liveliness is the gameplay equivalent of background music (or worse, noise).

It’s kinda like having a going to a festival where there are a whole bunch of stages playing music: You show up for specific bands (or honestly sometimes specific songs) and miss out on all the rest. Some people really like the opportunity to experience all this new stuff, but most people will stick around for the thing they know they like (get the most out of, that is), but the majority of people will stick the big stages where the most popular (i.e. rewarding) stuff is. Even if a hot new band everybody likes shows up at one of the smaller stages, it’s not going to be noticed without some serious getting the word out. And if people aren’t even there for the music in the first place (just in an area to do achievements or on their way to a dungeon), it quickly just becomes background noise. Especially if all those stages are crammed too close together (like when LS events start crowding into a zone). With all the advertising and fuss that goes into them, LS events are definitely major headliners.

The traditional quest system is closer to a music library. You generally can’t do too many of them at once, so you kinda pick and choose the order you want to do them in. They patiently wait for you to play them, and when a new song gets added to the list, odds are you will at least give it a one time listen.

So as much as I like having background music, odds are I won’t notice a new track if it was quietly slipped into the usual set, at least not right away.

I think it’s worth noting that all those little story arcs that the OP pointed out were also all in the starting areas. Most events are more or less one offs, especially in the midrange areas. The larger arcs feel more impactful on the world, but the one offs that you just stumble into rarely tell more of a story than an equivalent exclamation point and some text would. When the one offs cycle through so quickly, it pretty much loses all impact from an “effecting the world” perspective.

I don’t think they should regret it, just be more realistic about it. It does the random occurrences like Scarlet’s invasions well. It gives an interesting way for players to interact with the NPCs that inhabit the world. But it’s still just background stuff. It doesn’t really replace the traditional quest system in terms of giving players a sense of completion or a goal to work towards. Judging by the increasing prominence of instanced missions in the living story, I think they’ve got a better handle on the strengths and weaknesses of the system.

From what I and some guild members and the like have observed, it really seems to depend on the specific attack being used. Shadowstep or other similar teleport attacks seem to target on the furthest enemy away (lots of people have noticed this). The boss at the end of the cliffside fractal will consistently teleport someone who is reviving into the cages, crossing from one end of the room to another and ignoring all other characters attacking him. I imagine that all attacks with certain behaviors all choose targets the same way, but it really seems to be based on specific attacks.

Yeah, as neat as it would be to customize our home districts further, I doubt it will happen. I remember reading way back that the character customization tech is borrowed from Aion, but they limited it more so that the characters wouldn’t disrupt the game’s aesthetic.

When my charr wears the light heritage armor, there’s actually a spot where the pants clip through the back of the jacket. And that’s the same set…

The horns disappearing makes even less sense than the Asura ears

Yeah, that’s true. But my Asura loses his EARS with most helmets! I can believe someone tucking their hair up inside their helmet, but those massive ears with their ear bones would be very hard to squeeze in there. I can’t imagine an Asura wearing any helmet and not cutting ear holes in it. Any more than I can imagine a charr shaving his mane to wear a blindfold.

A friend of mine wrote something way back about this. He was pretty disappointed by the fact that Charr get all these cool fur patterns and the like but nobody could actually see them because of the way armor was designed. Seems strange that a fur covered race would be more keen on being fully covered than the furless races.

People COULD do the repeat thing, but then they would be missing the fact that not necessarily all hair styles are available from character creation. I don’t know if there are any kit-only hairstyles yet, but there are definitely hair colors. If they treated hairstyles more like dye that had a starting set and then had others that could be unlocked later, this could work really well.

I wouldn’t think health care would be a big sticking point for the Risen Priests…

But seriously, they should lower the rarity for something that you can easily get that many of and let you flush them down the toilet like so many risen goldfish.

fact: nobody cares about the karma, gold, or experience they get from dailies. They don’t even factor into this argument because there are alternative ways to get them, some of which are potentially more efficient. The only thing that matters are the laurels and their exclusive stat boosting rewards.

If there were alternative ways to get laurels or the prizes bought by them, people would not be sweating the dailies so much and creating 8 page threads.

This is a very good point. It would be nice to see more of the sky instead of the ground behind my character, however well textured it may be.

I’ve mentioned it before, it comes down to multiplication based power increases being more effective than the division based defensive stats, the ability to “actively” avoid attacks making defense superfluous, major enemy’s near complete immunity to crowd control, and the high cost to experimenting preventing people from finding possibly more effective individual builds or more cohesive group builds.

Once the MF change takes over I will probably end up retiring my explorer’s armor permanently in favor of zerker’s. With the state of the game as it is, I have no reason to go with anything else.

It’s funny, in a way I really like the fact that most achievements are account wide, but at the same time being able to run through all the missions with all the different professions was the main thing driving me in GW1. To be fair, it was more the fun of playing the different professions than anything. The only things that are character specific in GW2 are the personal story, exploration, crafting, and I guess dye collecting. Which is quite a bit of stuff, I suppose. But that doesn’t give me a whole lot of reason to actually play as them. I’ll generally just do the stuff I need to do with my main because it’s easiest. A little something like zquests at some point would be a nice incentive to actually play as my alts.

issue# 130807-000269

The game ceased to accept my wife’s password on the night of the 6th Eastern time. Because we have been unable to locate the serial code for the account, she has been asked a number of questions to verify her identity. She has complied as much as possible, and the same questions have now been asked 3 times. She had been playing it successfully that whole morning and afternoon. There is no more information she can give to verify the account. She says she will just give up on the account altogether if another email comes asking her to verify the same information. As someone who once worked in customer service, this is an unacceptable turn around for something as simple as resetting a password. She included a phone number earlier on so that this could be expedited. Please use this to resolve this issue as soon as possible.

Thanks.

Yeah, I’ve considered the recolor weapons thing too, but the way I see it, that’s just kinda lazy on their part anyways. One of the reason I like the zenith weapons is because they go well with my Illumination dyed draconian armor, and my one issue with the radiant armor is that it doesn’t. So yeah, more dye channels all around!